On Thu, Oct 27, 2011 at 9:29 PM, Pete Carah <pete@altadena.net> wrote:
On 10/27/2011 05:38 PM, Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu wrote:
On Thu, 27 Oct 2011 18:17:22 -0000, Brian Johnson said:
So... I'm in complete agreement with your statement, but The Wikipedia reference is not pertinent.
For our purpose, the ownership of the commons in question truly isn't relevant;
Pete, For our purpose, describing the Internet as a commons fundamentally misunderstands its nature. A commons is jointly owned, either by a non-trivial number of private owners or by all citizens of a government. For example, I own a 3/11,000ths share of a private road network. Those roads are a commons. The Internet is not jointly owned. You do not own a one seven billionth share of the network in my basement and I do not a own one seven billionth of yours. Rather, the Internet is a cooperative effort of the sole owners of its distinct individual pieces. As the owner of the network in my basement, it is my privilege alone to decide how you may and may not use it. The same goes for the respective owners of every other piece of the Internet. Nor is the data transiting these networks a commons. The air over my land is a commons. I don't control it. If I pollute it or if I don't, it promptly travels over someone else's land. According to intellectual property law, the data transiting the Internet is owned by its originator. That ownership does not change as the packets move between my network and yours. The point is, at every step with the Internet there is always a specific owner whose property is either being used with his permission or abused against his wishes. At no point is it a commons. You must understand the Internet's nature before you can properly consider my responsibility for the instructions passed from or through my network which direct the action of computers in yours. Regards, Bill Herrin -- William D. Herrin ................ herrin@dirtside.com bill@herrin.us 3005 Crane Dr. ...................... Web: <http://bill.herrin.us/> Falls Church, VA 22042-3004